


loyalties, assigned and otherwise

by takingoffmyshoes



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Multi, inadvisable levels of schmoop, kinkmeme fill, pre-OT3 to OT3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-07-21 19:26:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7400836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takingoffmyshoes/pseuds/takingoffmyshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written in response to this prompt:  </p><p>Gaby and Illya start dating after the events of the movie, but they feel like there's an element missing to their relationship.  A while later Napoleon gets sent on a dangerous mission, in which he almost dies.  Illya goes after him and manages to save him. Then, while Illya and Gaby are nursing Napoleon back to health, they begin to realize he was the missing element. And slowly, they start becoming a polyamorous relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *throws a handful of glitter in the air* nobody asked for this! 
> 
> (well, they did, because there was a prompt, but)
> 
> *throws another handful of glitter* nobody asked for _this much!_

They find him in Finland. That isn’t surprising, given that they lost him in Finland, but of the two events, the finding is rather the more significant.

He's been missing for almost two weeks.

The final pin falls into place at the prodding of Illya’s picks, and the heavy wooden door swings open on surprisingly silent hinges. The building is too large to be a manor and not quite large enough to be a castle, but it’s built in the style of both, with thick stone walls, maze-like corridors, and a vast network of frigid cellars. Only one cellar door had been locked when Illya prodded at it, and so he set to work with a dedication that even Solo might have approved of. 

There’s very little light, and so at first all Illya sees is smears of white in black. But there are no gunshots, no voices; there is no movement, in fact, no reaction of any kind, and so he slips inside. As he gets closer and his eyes adjust, the image resolves: Solo, slumped back in a loose sprawl against the far corner of the room, in shirtsleeves and trousers and not much else, paler than Illya’s ever seen him, and entirely too still. Illya runs the last few steps and skids to a halt on his knees, reaching out one hand to the pulse point just below his jaw and the other to his mouth. He feels the breath after long moments, but it's faint, and it's not enough. “Come on, Cowboy,” he mutters, still searching for a thrum against the cold skin. “Come on, come on, come on.”

Finally, _finally_ , he feels it: the tired beating of a pulse that’s too weak and too slow but unmistakably there. He slumps in relief and gives himself until the count of five to breathe, to let the red clear from his vision. The past few weeks haven’t been the same, without Solo. He had been sent to Finland for a glorified smash and grab, leaving Illya and Gaby to their own work elsewhere. When he missed the check-in time by four days, Waverly called and told them to go and find him. He’d sounded as though he half-expected Solo to have gotten distracted and found something else to do, but Gaby was worried and so of course eventually Illya found — to his great frustration — that he was worried, as well. It had taken them nearly a week to track him down, determine that he hadn't struck off on a side job, and come up with a plan to spring him (essentially a rather _inglorious_ smash and grab), and while a week was a short enough time, what he hadn’t counted on was _missing_ the American in anything more than a professional capacity. They’ve been working together for several months, and although his constant exasperation with Solo has diminished into something fonder, if he were asked, he would honestly say that Gaby is the only one he feels anything for.

Anything positive, that is, since it turns out that Solo's absence is just as irritating as his presence. 

And now they have him back, and he’s unconscious in a cell and well on his way to freezing to death. Of course he is. Illya’s mental count reaches its end, and he starts checking for injuries. 

He finds none, just faded bruises ringed around wrists and ankles and splashed across ribs that appear a bit more prominently than they used to. Beyond that, there’s nothing but cold, white skin. He runs his fingers through Solo’s hair, gently, gently, but encounters no blood, no swelling, no soft spots. A careful pat-down turns up no broken bones, no dislocated joints, and no internal bleeding, though Solo does rouse when Illya slips his hands under his shirt to check for this last. Even half-frozen, he apparently finds Illya’s hands inexcusably cold. “Peril?” he asks, little more than a breath, and starts to stir. “What’re you—”

“Still,” Illya whispers, and he stills. “Are you hurt?”

Solo manages to open his eyes at that. “I’ll be all right, Peril,” he rasps, and dredges up a wan smile as if that will make the joke any less awful. Illya takes the opportunity to take hold of his face and peer into his eyes, but it’s difficult to get a good look at his pupils in the dark.

“Did not answer my question,” he points out. Solo’s eyes drift closed again and he leans forward into Illya’s touch.

“Home’s a looooong way away, partner,” he slurs, in response to _absolutely nothing_ Illya has said, and appears to slip back into unconsciousness. Definitely hypothermia, then.

It’s easier to lift him than it should be — for all that Illya has a good four inches on him, Solo is solid. This is less true, apparently, after several days in a wine cellar (minus any wine), in addition to whatever he'd been up to before then. All told, Illya hasn't seen him in nearly three weeks. They stop once on their way out, in one of the side corridors Illya came in through, and Illya wrestles his inert partner into the extra socks, gloves, scarf, jacket, and hat that Gaby insisted he take with him. He doesn’t have shoes, but Illya just pulls a pair off of a dead guard, and then takes his goggles and heavy winter coat, too. Solo wakes up again as the boots go on, not enough to contribute in any useful kind of way but enough to swallow the sips of water Illya gives him. “Did they feed you?” Illya asks. Solo just shrugs loosely against Illya’s chest, where he’s propped up to drink. “Yes,” he says, “but…not…” Illya makes a frustrated noise, but Solo’s already drifting again. His rather fluid state of consciousness is concerning, though not really surprising, and there’s nothing he can do about it here. Illya puts the water bottle away, double-checks the gloves and the hat, reconsiders the scarf and wraps it like a balaclava instead, tucking the ends into the front of the coat. Then he hauls Solo up over his shoulder and carries him out the front door. 

The entire operation was severely understaffed; he’d killed everyone he needed to on the way in.

*

Gaby is waiting for them on a local road a few miles away. The car is hidden behind a crop of scrubby underbrush, and Gaby herself is behind a tree with a sniper rifle. She ducks back to the car when she sees them, pulls it onto the road and lets the engine idle for a bit to warm it up, then hurries back to meet them. “How is he?” she asks, voice tight with concern as she peers up at Solo, now on his feet but listing heavily against Illya’s chest and obviously clinging to consciousness through willpower alone. Illya had left the stolen snowmobile a few hundred yards away in a half-rotted hunting lodge, at which point Solo had woken up enough to protest that he could walk on his own. He had, too, for a loose understanding of “own.”

“Just cold, I think, and tired,” Illya responds, also cold and tired. Afternoon is already turning into evening and already it must be near twenty below zero. Solo had woken up sporadically while on the snowmobile — making driving it absolute _hell_ on Illya, who'd been sitting in front of him and trying to maneuver across the terrain while keeping tabs on his partner's mental state — never for more than a minute or so, but long enough for Illya to get a few answers out of him. Yes, he’d been fed, but only barely; no, he hadn’t been beaten, just cuffed until he'd grown too weak for it to matter (he doesn't say this in so many words, but Illya can tell that's what he means, and he has to stop himself from biting his tongue); they’d taken his clothes to torture him with the cold, not for anything more direct. Walking had taken enough of his energy that Illya hadn’t even tried to question him further. “He needs rest, but he’ll be fine.” 

Gaby helps him get Solo into the car, then slides into the front. The car is only marginally warmer than the outside, but it’s enough for now, and it will get warmer. Illya turns himself sideways, stretching out as much as he can in the cramped car, and arranges Solo against him. Gaby glances at them in the mirror, and Illya nods to say they’re all right. She returns her eyes to the road and puts the car into gear, easing out onto the packed earth road and getting the feel for its texture and shape. For the next few minutes, the only sounds are the humming of the engine and the rising notes of the wind through the bare trees. 

“They’re not extracting us,” Gaby says eventually. “It’s supposed to snow, and they don’t want to risk a plane or a helicopter. Waverly says there’s a CIA safe-house just a few hours from here, near Imatra. It’s still fully stocked, and we’ve been cleared to use it.”

Illya snorts. “CIA. Cowboy will love that, won’t you?” He jostles Solo a little, just a tiny shake, but Solo only turns his head to rest his cheek against Illya’s chest with something that might be a sigh. 

Gaby eyes them through the mirror again. “Are you sure he’s all right?”

“He’s exhausted,” Illya says. “Is impossible to sleep when you’re cold, and…” he trails off, not sure how much to tell Gaby right now, when she needs to focus on driving through the snow that is indeed beginning to fall. She’s proven herself to be the most level-headed of the three of them, but he’d rather she drive now and find out later. “They kept him very cold,” he settles on. 

Gaby sets her chin and her lips thin, but she looks back at the road. “Is he hypothermic?”

“Yes, but not too bad. This is good way to warm him up.” The car is slowly but steadily getting warmer, and Illya risks taking off his gloves. He gets two fingers underneath Solo’s various layers of sleeve, and this time his pulse is much easier to feel. 

“Warm up your goddamn hands,” Solo says, slowly and quietly, without opening his eyes. In spite of everything, Illya smiles.

*

Half an hour later, Illya’s shucked his hat, scarf, and heavy coat, and has unwound Solo’s scarf and removed his gloves. He’s also holding onto him much more tightly than usual, because Solo is shivering fiercely. He seems to know what to do, at least: relax as best he can, and just give himself over to it while Illya rubs warmth into his arms and chest and keeps him from falling off the seat. This is the most miserable part, Illya thinks. Coming out of hypothermia and realizing just how cold you really are. To Solo, it will feel like forever, but soon the shivering will slow, and stop, and he’ll probably be asleep again within minutes of it ending.

It’s still snowing, but the gentle, hypnotic flakes have yet to coalesce into anything more menacing. The road remains clear, even if the sky is not, and by the time the shaking stops and Solo’s ragged breathing evens out, Illya is closer to sleep than he’d like to admit. 

“You thought he’d run.” Gaby’s quiet voice startles him, and that is a bad sign in and of itself. “Didn’t you?”

“No. But I thought that, whatever he was up to, he could handle it.” That he was wrong, neither of them felt the need to say. 

“If he had run, what would you have done?”

Illya shrugs, looks out at the snowflakes flying past the window. “Let him, I suppose. Although I do not see why he would want to — U.N.C.L.E. is better for him than CIA.”

“Is it better than the KGB?”

“Yes,” Illya says, with no hesitation. She knows this. She knows why. But she still asks, every now and again, to make sure that his answer is the same, or to see how long it takes him to admit it. There was a time when he would have paused, doubted, drawn up short by loyalty to those who had made him. He owes a great deal to those people, still, but he doesn’t owe himself. 

He chooses, now, the people to whom he belongs.

*

Despite Gaby’s attempts to get him to do otherwise, Illya stays awake for the rest of the trip.  
Solo woke up not long after falling asleep, made some embarrassingly futile attempts at sitting up, and let Illya talk him into dozing off again. He stayed resolutely unconscious afterwards, but his breathing and pulse were fine, so Illya was more relieved than worried.

By the time they pull into the driveway, the snow is getting thick enough that he understands Waverly’s reluctance to send in an aircraft. The roads were fine until the very end, but Gaby is a good driver, and his trust in her proved once again to be extremely well-founded. The safe-house is a small, nondescript house in a small, nondescript neighborhood several miles out from the center of Imatra, an industrial town near the Finno-Russian border. It doesn’t look like much, but if it can protect even the incompetent CIA, it must be more than it appears. Illya says as much to Solo, who just does something condescending with his eyebrows and leans on Illya a little more as they make their way up the front steps. Gaby’s already been in and cleared it, preferring to take point rather than carry a tall man out of the car, and with a couple of lights on…

“Well,” Illya allows, “it isn’t _terrible_.” 

“Would you _prefer_ a concrete box with no heating?” Solo asks mildly. “If you have something against comfortable seating, I’ll happily leave you the floor.” He pulls away from Illya, veering in the direction of an admittedly soft-looking couch, but Illya snags him back and steers him towards their original goal. 

“No,” he says sternly. “Bed.”

“There’s only one,” Solo points out, very calmly for a man who’s being dragged. “I assumed you and Gaby would be taking it.”

“We weren’t kept in a basement for a week,” Gaby snaps as they enter the offending bedroom, where she’s aggressively plumping the pillows. “And besides, Illya’s right — you’ll sleep better in here.”

“Can you be right about something,” Solo muses, “without ever actually saying it?”

“Sit,” Illya growls, and slings him against the edge of the bed so that his knees buckle accordingly. “Good to have you back, Cowboy, but not that good.” 

“Likewise, Peril,” Solo says happily, and lets Illya get to work on his boot laces.

*

Solo spends the rest of the evening pretty much the way he would if he were drunk: uncoordinated, off-balance, and not entirely up to sustained conversation. He’s quieter, though, and the forced bonhomie from earlier is nowhere to be seen. It’s a combination of muscular and mental fatigue, in Illya’s rather experienced opinion, as well as the relief of being safe and warm again. Warmth, once forgotten, is really a wonderful thing to return to, and it’s easy enough to get tipsy from it. Illya chivvies him into the shower, helps him dry off, checks him again for any cuts or bruises he might have missed the first time, hands him a stack of clothing Gaby had pulled out of her suitcase in a bag labeled with a monogrammed _S_ (“What? They were free with the luggage set, I got one for everyone”), makes sure he gets the right limbs in the right parts, and steers him into the kitchen for dinner.

Normally, he would be infuriated at having to stoop to such levels, and he’s not really sure why he didn’t just leave Solo sitting on the bed with his bag of clothes and let him manage on his own. Perhaps it’s because Solo gave up on pretending to be fine about ten minutes after they got there, and Illya knows all too well what he’s been through. Perhaps it’s because, for exactly once in the course of human history, Napoleon Solo isn’t trying to diffuse the discomfort of being dependent by being rude. He’s accepting help, if not gracefully, then at least somewhat passively, and Illya finds that he…doesn’t mind. He would absolutely never help Napoleon Solo, CIA’s finest, dry his hair, which is fine because this isn’t Napoleon Solo, CIA’s finest. It’s just Napoleon. Just Solo. So he does, and then he gets him into whatever is passing for pajamas these days (Gaby has strong preferences when it comes to pajamas, and has undertaken to convert the others to her school of thought), and keeps a hand at the small of his back to steady him as they make their way to the other side of the house.

Gaby has raided the pantries and put together a very acceptable soup. There’s no bread to go with it, but it’s hot and it’s food, and even if Solo hadn’t been given enough to get on with, he should be able to manage soup. He manages fine, chin resting in one hand and spoon in the other, and seems mildly surprised when between one spoonful and the next, it comes up empty. “More?” Gaby offers, but he shakes his head. 

“It was good, though. Thank you.” The other two have been finished for some time, so Gaby takes that as her cue to start clearing the table and Illya pushes his chair back and says, “All right, Cowboy, time for bed.” Solo goes without argument, standing on his own but allowing Illya’s arm around his waist again to steady him when he wavers. He’s not quite good on his feet, muscles worn out by shivering, or else light-headed from the comedown. Maybe he isn’t entirely sure he believes that he’s out. 

Maybe he still doesn’t believe that they would come for him.

Maybe it took them too long to do it.

He gets Solo settled in — and if he ever reminds Illya of this night, and the fact that he just _tucked him in_ , he’ll….do something, surely, he won’t just _take_ it, he simply hasn’t come up with a suitable retaliation, that’s all — and he’s almost out of the room when Solo’s voice stops him. “Going somewhere?” It’s insubstantial and careless, but it’s not uncalculated, and that’s what makes him stop.

“Dishes,” Illya says without turning around, but then an idea comes to him and he does turn around, if only to reinforce his words. “Gaby’s going to sleep in here with you tonight, to keep an eye on you. Problem?” 

Solo doesn’t open his eyes to answer — he just smiles. “I’m not going to do anything untoward, if that’s what you’re worried about, but I do have to wonder: will you actually fit on that couch?”

Illya doesn’t physically roll his eyes, but turns on his heel with precisely that mentality. “Goodnight, Cowboy.”

“Night, Peril.”

He closes the door but doesn’t latch it, and turns to see Gaby leveling him with a piercing look over her glass. It’s just water — the only alcohol in the place is a mostly full bottle of truly awful bourbon, which she had loudly bemoaned before deciding she'd get to it tomorrow — but it sharply recalls their first night together.

“So,” she says, in the sort of tone that precedes headlong tackles in unwise directions, and Illya carefully sidesteps away from the door. “I’m sleeping with Solo tonight?”

“Only in the most staid and literal sense,” he assures her. “He said he won’t do anything untoward.”

Gaby swirls her water in her glass and leans back against the table. Her shoes are gone, Illya realizes. “And you believe him?” Something very dangerous is going on in her head, so he rolls up his sleeves and busies himself with the dishes before she unleashes it on him. 

“Yes. Because one, he knows I could kill him, and two, he’s been unconscious for better part of the day.”

Gaby smiles; the predatory look vanishes. “We all know you wouldn’t kill him for that, Illya.”

He shrugs. “Is expression. I don’t own you, I know that. Besides,” he adds as he scrubs out the pot, “you can take care of yourself.”

“We all know that, too.” She goes up on tiptoe for a kiss. “Guess I’d better get comfortable, then,” she murmurs in his ear, and a spoon catches the water all wrong and suddenly his shirt is drenched and Gaby is laughing softly and the door to Napoleon’s room is open and this is _not_ how he thought today would go.


	2. Chapter 2

Things are better in the morning, or at least less surreal. Illya wakes up on a couch that’s too small in a safe house that he’s seeing by daylight for the first time in a country that doesn’t know he’s there, and all of this is normal. 

Solo joins him in the kitchen for coffee, and this too is normal, even if his unruly mess of hair isn’t. He’s had a difficult couple of weeks, after all, and it’s unlikely his hair product was packed along with the clothes Gaby brought. That, or he simply lacks the energy to deal with it. Unlike him (Solo has always given his hair outrageous priority), but understandable. Gaby appears not long after and summarily crushes his attempts to declare himself the breakfast chef, which is probably for the best. He shrugs it off, which earns him a few side-eyes from the stove, but then he picks at his eggs and sips at his coffee and keeps glancing around the room and somehow it isn’t normal at all.

*

“I think he’s running a fever,” Gaby tells him a few hours later when she joins him in the sitting room, where he’s just finished giving his report to Waverly. Solo gave his first and then went back to bed, citing the lack of anything better to do but not quite able to hide the lingering stiffness of his movements or the sluggishness of his thoughts. Solo’s report hadn’t gone so well, apparently — Waverly had words for Illya about that when he took the telephone from Gaby. Carefully veiled words, no overt questions or expressed concern, but the conversation had carried a firm undertone of _fix this_.

 _Of course he is_ , Illya thinks, and rubs at the tension headache forming above his eyebrows. “You’re not sure?”

Gaby shrugs and pours herself a drink. She wasn’t kidding about the bourbon, apparently, and he wonders how her report had gone. “If he is, it’s not serious, but he’s definitely a little off. It’s probably just a cold, or something.”

“Probably,” Illya agrees, but goes to check anyway.

Solo’s awake when Illya comes in, curled loosely on his side under the quilts and blankets. That he doesn’t react beyond raising an eyebrow speaks volumes. “Gaby send you in?” he asks, voice half an octave lower than usual and still faintly rasping. 

“No,” Illya says shortly, and sits down on the bed. It trembles ever so slightly underneath him. “You cold?”

“Probably not,” is the response, insouciant as ever but shaded with exhaustion. “I just haven’t picked up on that yet.”

“Are you sick?”

This earns him an eyeroll, lavish and unrestrained. “Remind me never to let you go undercover as a doctor. Would you even have a _forged_ medical degree hanging in your office, or would you just write ‘MD’ directly onto the wall?" That’s a long sentence after the past day, but Solo carries through the roughness and gets the last word out before he falls to coughing.

Illya lets out a long breath and looks up at the ceiling. “If your own terrible humor is going to kill you, I’d recommend staying silent.”

“You’re one to talk,” Solo mutters.

“Ah, but unlike you, I actually _can_ talk.”

“Hah,” Solo says, and coughs again. It's dry and not too deep; Gaby’s probably right that it's just a cold, but he can't help the twist of concern that tugs unpleasantly in his chest. 

This version of Solo is almost entirely foreign to him. Since their first meeting, he’s been the picture of pictures, in all ways an artfully cultivated image, never more real than he has to be, and always, in some form or another, lying about something. Illya doesn't begrudge him that: he lies to survive, and his deceptions are carefully managed to maximize his utility. It's almost admirable, really, how much of himself Solo can hide away and ignore in order to become someone else, someone necessary. It makes him a good agent, a good spy. 

It's just… It's hard to know what to do with him when he _isn't_ lying. A small, selfish part of Illya wants very much for Solo to go back to being Solo. He wants him to get out of bed and style his hair and put on airs and wander about the safe house, criticizing this or remarking on that, and act as though none of this had ever happened and anyone who said otherwise would be given burnt food for the remainder of the mission. 

He wants their easy dynamic, into which Solo’s chameleon persona has always fit effortlessly by virtue of his expecting it to be accommodated. 

He wants, he realizes, to not have to worry. He wants Solo to lie and convince them he's fine so that Illya won't have to look at his _honesty_ — look at what he hides until he simply no longer has the energy for pretence — and figure out how to take care of him. 

He has not, he thinks, ever been particularly good at that.

“You all right there, Peril?” The question startles him, and he blinks sharply. Solo’s looking up at him with a peculiar expression. 

“Da,” Illya says, perhaps a little too quickly. “I was...thinking.”

Solo smirks, peculiarity fading. “Don't hurt yourself.”

“It is not me I am worried about,” Illya admits. He probably could have kept that to himself, but it's too late now. 

Solo rolls his eyes again, but one of his hands snakes out from under the blankets to cover Illya’s own on the edge of the mattress. He gives it a brief, impulsive squeeze, and the tightness in Illya’s chest loosens just a bit. “I'll be fine,” he says, letting his eyes drift closed again. “Just keep Waverly off my back for a bit, will you? I don't think he's terribly happy with me.”

“We’ll handle Waverly,” Illya promises. He just hopes he's right.

*

Illya stays with Solo that night, at Gaby’s insistence. The couch is much more her size, she says, and Illya doesn't disagree. He's slept worse places, but he knows better than to try to plead empty chivalry. The last time he’d tried, well. Gaby may be small, but a hundred pounds of indignation sitting cross-legged on one’s chest is an unpleasant experience when one is fond of things like breathing.

Anyway, it begins snowing again during the afternoon, and after conceding another day’s delay in their extraction, they decide that catching up on some rest wouldn't be the worst use of their time. Illya feels more than a bit childish, going to bed almost immediately after supper, but Solo’s flagging more noticeably than ever and looking worse by the hour. 

By the time Illya gets him back into the bedroom, he's flushed along his cheekbones and his hands are shaking badly enough that he needs help doing up the buttons on his pajamas. “It's okay,” Illya murmurs, gently taking his hands and lowering them to his sides. “It's okay, it's not your fault.”

Now, bare minutes after lying down, Solo is out, and Illya is sitting next to him, faced with a conundrum. 

His mother had cold hands, as well, when he was a boy, and had soon realized that they were next to useless for gauging a fever. Illya had rarely been sick, but still he remembers a fleeting brush of lips and the press of a cheek against his forehead, followed by either a disgruntled ‘hmph’ or a considering hum.

This is one of many habits Illya has never had trouble not picking up.

He rubs his hands together vigorously, breathes into them, rubs them again, and that is usually enough, but. Solo doesn't stir, which should tell him what he needs to know, but there's that lingering doubt, that sense that he can't quite be _sure_...

Hell, he thinks. 

The movements come as naturally as if they had been his own all along. One hand slips through Solo's hair, the lightest of caresses, and then plants itself on the mattress as Illya leans forward. It is, perhaps, easier than it should be. 

Solo’s skin is hot against his lips, hot against his cheek, and he should be embarrassed but all he feels is worry, and that sharp, selfish wish for Solo to pretend. 

It's possible they have a problem.

*

Actually, they have a few.

The first problem is that Solo is, in fact, miserably sick.

He wakes Illya up in the middle of the night, coughing, and this time it’s deeper and it's definitely not dry. He's aware enough to sit up and take the glass of water Illya gets for him, but he's flushed and sweating and his eyes are too bright in the yellow light of the bedside lamp, and Illya is _concerned_.

“You have a bad fever,” Illya tells him, when he's lying down again and eyeing the damp washcloth in Illya’s hand like it’s some kind of devilry. 

“I'm fine,” Solo says, but his voice is hoarse, and far from its usual cool confidence.

“No, you're not,” Illya reminds him, with what he considers to be admirable patience. Now that Solo is pretending again — or trying to, at least, although it isn’t very convincing — Illya finds it frustrating, a pointless exercise in saving face that isn’t in need of saving. “You are exhausted, malnourished, and very sick.”

“I wouldn't say ‘very,’” Solo starts, still regarding Illya with no small amount of wariness. 

Illya sighs. “Just let me, Cowboy.”

They teeter, for a moment, on the edge of a battle of wills. 

Illya doesn’t really know what he’ll do if Solo chooses to argue. That selfish part of him is still quietly there, but a growing part of him is urging, for the first time, gently, _give in._

So he watches, and he wills, and he can see the moment that Solo does. 

It’s in the way he closes his eyes, the way he abruptly lets go of the tension in his jaw. It’s not a surrender, but it is a retreat. _Do your worst_ , it seems to say. _I don’t intend to be here for it._ A bare lightbulb comes to mind, the stark illumination of leather straps and a calligraphic line of dark red tracing its way down marble skin. Illya pushes the image away, grateful that Solo can’t see the flash of revulsion as he does.

He tries to remain impersonal, as if he were dealing with a line of stitches, or a broken bone, but Solo has never come to them for patching up after missions. He prefers to shut himself away and address his injuries himself, when he can; when he can’t, he weathers it with a familiar absence. It’s not just Illya — Solo goes still and vacant under Gaby’s hands, as well, face schooled into perfect indifference when the damage is serious and just a shade more sardonic when it isn’t. The war, maybe. The CIA. The life of a thief turned prisoner. Maybe it’s just Solo himself, but then, if Solo has a self that is separate from his work — if who he is has ever been distinct from what he does — Illya has never seen it.

He tries to be impersonal, but it proves impossible.

Cool water on overwarm skin, fingers through the hair that clings to it, the quiet sounds of breathing, the shadows of careful motion against a still and vulnerable form; these are, by nature, inescapably intimate, and the the second problem is that Illya finds it comforting.

He tries, for some short amount of time, to tell himself that it’s the relief of having rescued their teammate. That he is taking comfort in the knowledge that he has done his job well, and that this will strengthen the trust between them even further. That this is nothing more than is to be expected after finding Solo as he had. But he knows, even as he tries to convince himself otherwise, that he hadn’t missed Solo as a teammate. He hadn’t missed him for his skills, hadn’t found himself at a loss without the particular angles that Solo could offer when strategizing, or been unable to complete a mission without the component of Solo’s camouflaging charm.

In the three weeks that Solo had been gone, Illya hadn’t struggled as an agent, hadn’t felt insecure in his abilities, hadn’t performed his duties any less well. 

But he had missed him. Missed the dry humor that flavored everything he said, missed the genial insults that could be tossed back and forth like the bugs they both still tried to slip unnoticed into the other’s space and still invariably found. Missed the way that Solo would always slap him heartily on the back when he was holding a glass of something, and the way that he would grin afterwards, bright and utterly unrepentant as Illya startled and tried not to spill it. Missed the quieter way that Solo’s shoulder would bump into his, casually, in passing, when quarters were tight, and the softer looks he would offer. Missed the silence, rare as it seemed, when it was late and they were all tired but none of them wanted to go to bed, and they all sat together — sometimes on chairs or couches, often on the floor, and once on a roof, which of course had been Solo’s idea. He’d wandered onto the balcony of their living room, made some considering noises, and found a way to the peak of the building’s roof via the balcony railing and the dormer window of the bedroom next to it. It had been a warm night, and so they’d all sat up on the shingle, watching what stars they could see over the ambient light of a small coastal town in northern France. 

That had been a vacation, actually, that Waverly had given them after a particularly grueling run of missions. A week and a half in Carantec, which Illya still looks back on as a time of almost idyllic peacefulness. Solo and Gaby in the kitchen, Solo in the luridly colored apron Gaby had bought him and Gaby sitting on the countertop next to the stove, taste-testing everything several times to ensure it would be palatable for people who didn’t think fungus dug up by pigs was an acceptable standard of culinary quality. Solo and Gaby and Illya, foregoing the sand beaches in favor of the coastline’s natural rocks, sitting with their shoes off and their trousers rolled up, watching seagulls and sailboats wheel about through different shades of blue. Gaby and Illya dancing; Gaby walking him through various steps, holding his hands up, bouncing gently with the tempo since staying still is a waste of music, and Solo. Solo, in an arm chair, ignoring his newspaper and watching them with the soft regard that had taken so long to be real. The three of them, strolling along narrow streets, eating outside, and not worrying about anyone but themselves.

For a week and a half, it was wonderful. For nearly four months, it has been his grounding memory, his point of calm. But it wasn’t just Gaby, and it wasn’t just the room and the bed and the nights they shared. His peacefulness isn’t rooted solely in the memory of her wading in the shallows, face comically dismayed by the cold, or in the feel of her hands, or in the sound of her whisper or in the way her eyes caught the moonlight from their open window. 

There was always more. 

Solo, laughing when Gaby had frozen and gasped, “Es ist kalt!” and calling back, “Was hast du erwartet?” Solo, watching them unveiled fondness as they danced, when he thought they couldn’t see, or simply didn’t care if they did. Solo, waiting in the kitchen with breakfast each morning, and making it so easy for the nocturnal pattern of two to slip back into the diurnal pattern of three. Solo, leading them up onto the roof to see the stars over the water. 

Of all the revelations Illya has ever had, this is by far the quietest. 

He looks down again at Solo, and nothing is different. There is no “new light,” nor any fresh perspective. There is no drastic shift of thought, no sudden shying away from the truth. No reflexive denial, no attempts to find another explanation. 

_I love you,_ he thinks, just to test the words, and nothing about them feels wrong. If anything, it feels as though he has been struggling to express a complex thought, and someone has just offered up a word that fits so precisely that his entire understanding of the thought has changed. 

_I love you,_ he thinks, and runs his fingers through Solo’s hair again, just because he can. Solo turns his head to rest his cheek against Illya’s hand with something that might be a sigh. 

The third problem, of course, is that he will eventually have to tell Gaby about this. And Solo. But for now, he is content with cool water on overwarm skin, fingers through the hair that clings to it, the quiet sounds of breathing, the shadows of careful motion against a still and vulnerable form. 

And later, when Solo’s sleep is deeper and his fever has gone down a bit, Illya will climb back into bed with him and go to sleep as well. Maybe it will feel different this time, but somehow he doesn’t think it will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with this! Please feel free to let me know what you think, or if you catch any mistakes!
> 
>  **Update:** I'm sorry for the long wait, but I've been having some difficulties irl that are making it both physically and emotionally difficult to write right now. I'm excited to continue writing this story, but I'm afraid it's going to be a while longer until I can update, since on top of those current difficulties I'm about to get hella busy with moving and school and a new job. In the meantime, I really appreciate your continued interest and support, and I'd be very grateful for your patience! Thanks a bunch!


	3. Chapter 3

“You need to talk to him,” Gaby says the next day, and Illya nearly chokes on his toast. 

“I don't—” he manages to get out, but Gaby’s already fixed him with a stern look, so he stops. 

"He won't talk to me when he's like this," she huffs, dropping into the chair across from him and snagging a piece of his toast. His initial reaction — terror, actually, that she'd somehow found out about his quiet revelation and was about to confront him over it — fades to disgust with how easily he would have given himself away. 

"And you think he talks to _me?_ " Illya counters, but he slides the plate to the middle of the table. "He doesn't even _look_ at me when I try." 

Gaby munches irritably for a few moments, glaring at something behind him. "He's such a child," she says eventually. "Refusing to admit that he needs help, refusing to admit that he's hurt, refusing to admit that he's _human_ — " She tears loudly into another piece of toast, chewing like it's the only way to vent her irritation. "Gott," she says through the mouthful, "it makes me so _angry_ sometimes, I could just—" She goes on for a while, furiously shoveling toast into her mouth like she hasn't eaten in days and unleashing weeks' worth of worry in the form of invective against Solo's stubbornness, his dismissiveness, and his character in general. "It's like he doesn't trust us," she finishes, when she's exhausted her supplies of both toast and rage, and seems more dejected than anything else. "After everything we've been through together, he still doesn't trust us. Why?" The question is clearly directed at Illya, but he doesn't have an answer.

*

When ten o'clock comes and goes and Solo still hasn't made an appearance, Illya toasts some more bread and makes a cup of tea and takes the set to his room. "Cowboy?" he calls, hands too full to knock, and gets nothing but silence. It's easy enough to elbow open the door, but harder to suppress his irritation at finding Solo awake and looking right at him.

"You lose your voice?" he asks curtly, and sets the plate and mug down on the bedside table with perhaps a bit more clatter than necessary. 

"Not yet," Solo admits, though it is even raspier than it had been. "I don't suppose if I had, you'd let me off the hook?"

"No," Illya says, "I would not." Then, "Toast?"

"Not hungry," Solo says, without so much as glancing at it. 

"Tea, then." Illya holds out the cup, intractable, and Solo eyes it for a moment before pushing himself up against the headboard and extricating his upper half from the blankets. Illya doesn't miss the way he wraps both hands around the warm ceramic and pulls it in close to his chest between sips, but he doesn't comment. Instead, he goes around to the other side of the bed, toes off his shoes, and sits, swinging his legs up in front of him on the quilt.

"So," he says, after a while. "Why do you think Waverly is unhappy with you?"

"I got the impression that he found my report....insufficiently informative."

"How so?"

Solo takes a long sip of tea. "He asked questions I couldn't answer."

"About...?" Illya presses.

"For god's sake, Peril," Solo snaps, abruptly sharp, "you know what. What I'd done wrong, how they'd made me, where they kept me, what they asked me, what I told them."

There's a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, but he's come this far so he might as well go on. "And you couldn't—"

"I don't remember a damn bit of it," Solo confirms bitterly, and that is...shocking, really, to say the least. Solo's memory has always been trustworthy; he deals in information, after all, as they all do, but collecting and sorting and applying minutiae in a particularly annoying way is as much a trademark of his style as is his ubiquitous charm.

Something of his consternation must be showing, since Solo shoots him another sideways look and elaborates. "I was drugged," he says, as if that improves the situation. "Repeatedly, I'd assume, judging by the amount of time I seem to be missing. By the time they stopped, I—" He cuts himself off, as if to avoid the unthinkable act of describing his own maltreatment, but it hardly makes a difference. "Well," he says dismissively, "you saw."

Illya _had_ seen. Seen him slowly dying of exposure in a half-abandoned castle, left in a cellar to freeze, or at least to loosen his tongue. He said he'd been fed, after all, so why would they—

A thought occurs. "You never said you'd been drugged," Illya accuses, recalling the harrowing stretch on the stolen snowmobile, when he'd managed to get a few answers out of a semi-coherent Solo. That had definitely not been one of them.

Solo looks almost confused by that. "You never asked," he says, then coughs roughly into the crook of his elbow. It's a little drier today, but it's still deep and painful-sounding, and Illya's irritation threatens to evaporate on the spot. He holds it firmly in place, not yet done with it.

"You had the opportunity," Illya reminds him shortly, once the coughing has stopped. Solo huffs.

"Right," he says, a few large swallows of tea later. "Because that would have been so useful. 'Oh, by the way, I was drugged last week and I think I'm fine but I don't remember anything so I can't really be sure.' What would you have done with that information, exactly?"

Illya has to take a few slow breaths before he answers: sick or not, the man is _infuriating_ , and Illya really has no wish to smack the tea out of his hands but the urge is growing by the second. "We are a _team_ ," he says, giving each word the time and space to be heard. "You tell us when something happens so that we can factor it into _plans_ and not get ourselves _killed_ when something you refuse to admit is wrong blows up in our faces."

"Peril," Solo starts, but Illya cuts him off. 

"Нет," he snaps, sharply enough that Solo raises both eyebrows and subsides. "I am tired, Cowboy, of having to pry information from you like teeth. I am tired of seeing your blood, or your limp, or your . . . your аритмия, and having to act like I do not so that you will not feel the need to hide it. I am tired of the way you pretend nothing is wrong, I am tired of the way you shut us out, but above all else I am tired of the way you expect us to play along. 

"Maybe this is joke to you. Maybe you don't give a damn whether you live or die, but you have no right — no right — to ask Gaby and me to ignore these things. I don't care how badly it hurts your pride; if you are too sick or too injured to perform as usual, you must _tell us,_ or anything that goes wrong is on you.

“And дa,” he goes on, “perhaps the information won’t be needed, and дa, perhaps you can take care of yourself, and is not problem, but it is far worse to pretend you don’t need help when you do than to put aside your pride and just ask.”

"Is that what you think?" Solo asks once the time in which Illya might have continued is come and gone. "That it's about pride?"

Illya snorts. "Everything else is, with you."

"Ah," Solo says. He leans over to set the cup down on the bedside table, then burrows back down into the bedding, wrapping himself in blankets so that when he speaks again, his voice is muffled. "If that's all you have, then I think we're done here." 

"This isn't a game," Illya tells him, irritation rising sharply once again. _Guess Solo's Motivation: Only One Chance Given, Exiled if Wrong, Lied to if Right._

"No," Solo says. "You've made that abundantly clear." He coughs again, and the bed shakes. "But I'm really rather sick, you know, and you're smarter than that. So I'm going to have a rest, and you're going to come back when you've overcome the urge to scold me like a child." He rolls over, and that seems to be that.

“I’ll stop scolding you like child when you stop acting like one,” Illya snaps, aware that he’s dropped an article somewhere but not really able to give a fuck. He swings his legs off the bed and stands up aggressively enough to rattle the frame. “Have your rest, and then we will talk like adults. And eat your toast,” he adds, before slamming the door behind him.

“That went well,” Gaby observes mildly from one of the armchairs in the sitting room, and Illya unclenches his fists. 

“He is angry with himself,” Illya says, “which means he is angry with all of us. He will cool down.” He sits in the opposite chair and wishes, not for the first time, that he had his chess set. Chess is good for practicing strategy, but also good for freeing up the mind for the consideration of matter that elude conscious grasp. Solo is a particularly troublesome puzzle, given his atrocious attitude and Illya’s deeply inconvenient feelings for him, and he would welcome the chance to examine the issue with the sort of freedom that chess allows. Sitting and staring off into space is less effective, and it makes him look rather unhinged.

“Why is he angry?” Gaby asks. “He was very bland when I went in; you know how he gets. I couldn’t get anything out of him, not even his temperature - I tried, and he told me to leave - but he didn’t get angry.”

“He doesn’t like needing help.”

Gaby snorts. “I could have told you that. Except…” She pauses, looking contemplative. “The first night, though,” she starts slowly. “The first night, he didn’t seem to mind at all. I mean, you were practically carrying him, and _Gott_ , I even slept with him, and—” She stops abruptly.

Illya meets her gaze, and sees his own startled realization reflected there. 

“No,” he says, disbelieving.

“Yes,” she counters, defending, then looks around furtively — Solo’s door is still closed — and scooches her chair closer to Illya’s. “ _Yes_ ,” she says quietly. “Think about it.”

“I don’t want to,” Illya tells her, except that he _does_. He really, really does.

These sorts of things never work out cleanly. Not that he has much experience with them, but the odds are overwhelmingly against any sort of satisfactory conclusion. Still, if it _were_ to work…

“No,” he says firmly, shutting down his own line of thought as much as hers. “It is wishful thinking, that’s all.” 

“Don’t you remember Carantec?” Gaby presses, leaning forward. She is as tenacious as she is brilliant, which often means that she is right and everyone else just needs to accept it, but Illya can’t help but feel that in this instance her reasoning is a little more self-serving than is normal. 

“I remember us,” Illya replies obstinately. “Us, together, and Solo as a teammate.”

Gaby sits back with a huff. “It’s not about us right now, Illya. It’s about Solo.”

“Isn’t it always?” The irritability is back, left over from his conversation with Solo. “I don’t want to talk about this now.” There’s nothing to do around the safehouse — everything in the building is in decent repair, the weapons are cleaned, and it’s too early to start cooking lunch — so Illya goes over to the door and starts pulling on his boots. 

“Where are you going?” Gaby asks.

“Out,” he answers shortly. “Surveil neighborhood.” On goes his coat, his hat, and his gloves, and his smaller gun is still tucked into his pocket when he pats it to check. 

Gaby doesn’t look fooled, which means that she definitely _isn’t_ fooled, but she doesn’t call him out. “Be careful,” she says, and he’s fairly certain she’s not referring to the neighborhood.

*

Walking serves much the same purpose as chess, with the additional benefit of allowing him to work off some of his restless energy. The snow has stopped for now, leaving the landscape sparkling and bright and almost cheerful, despite the treachery of the ice and the cold.

Damn, even the _weather_ reminds him of Solo. He needs to get a grip on himself. He needs to stop thinking about impossible things he cannot have. He needs to remember to bring a scarf the next time he heads out. He hunches the coat up higher around his neck and trudges on, the air cold and dry on the skin between collar and cap. 

In a way, one problem has been solved, but it’s opened up another one. Illya cares for Solo a great deal more than he probably should, but now that Gaby’s planted the thought in his head he can’t escape the notion that maybe — just maybe — Solo feels the same way. Not just about him, but about them both, and isn’t that best? Wouldn’t that in its own way be easier than someone - him, Solo, Gaby, any of them - trying to navigate the mess of one-sided affection? But that only works if Gaby also feels for Solo the way Illya does. The way she had spoken just now… But no, there is no proof. She had just been trying to convince Illya of Solo’s position, to remind him that Solo acted as though he wanted them, that maybe that was the reason for his sudden coldness. She hadn’t said anything about her own feelings, clearly said that it wasn’t about them - not about her and Illya, but about Solo. And damn it all, but he’d been right when he responded, hadn’t he? When _isn’t_ it about Solo? When _isn’t_ he a part of their lives, a part of their considerations? When _aren’t_ they vexed and perplexed by the endless curiosities of his character? When _don’t_ they worry about him and wonder about him and crash themselves like waves on his walls in the attempt to get him to _let them in_? 

Fucking _never_ , apparently, because it’s getting to be that Illya can’t remember a life without Solo. Doesn’t want to remember a life without Solo, any more than he wants to remember a life without Gaby, because hasn’t it just gotten so much better since they arrived? Hasn’t the work been better, the handler been better, the world been better?

And is it all of that which tempts him to hang his hat upon his teammates — his _friends_ , god damn him — and regard them as his saviors, or has all of that come to pass simply because his teammates (his _friends_ ) are the people they are?

And if it’s the latter, doesn’t it make sense to love them? Such talented, brilliant, hard-working people, who have saved the world a handful of times and still found room for light and laughter? 

Wouldn’t it be right? 

More importantly, wouldn’t it be wrong _not_ to love them?

*

When Illya gets back, his fingers are stiff despite the gloves and the deep pockets, but his mind is clear at last. He knows how to address this problem, and fortunately, it’s the tactic he’s best at.

“Gaby,” he says firmly, as soon as he has closed and triple-locked the door behind him. “I think I am in love with Solo. I think you are, too, but that is not my choice to make. I think he is also in love with us, but again, that is not my decision. What _is_ my decision is that I am all right with all of this. I want it. I—” He stumbles at last, but not because anything about Gaby’s posture reads anger or protest. She’s curled up on the couch, a book in her lap; if anything, she looks relieved, and also a little bit amused. It’s the warmth in her eyes that startles him, the patient encouragement to continue, to see his conclusion through to the end. 

“I would welcome it,” Illya manages through a throat gone inexplicably tight. “I don’t have the words to tell you how much I would welcome it. If I am wrong about you, or about Solo, then that is my burden to bear and I will not let it come between us — between any of us.” He stops, wets his lips, and feels abruptly ridiculous to be still standing on the door mat, in full winter garb, even his gloves still on. But he’s come this far, and Soviet stubbornness runs rich in his veins. “But if I am not wrong, all I can do is tell you that I am willing. Willing to try. The rest, it is up to you, and to Solo. But I am willing, and whatever is decided, I will accept.”

For long seconds, Gaby just looks at him, that warmth still softening her eyes, often so cutting and calculating. 

“Illya,” she says at last, “you dense, wonderful Russian, I’ve been _trying_ to tell you. For _weeks_. But you wouldn’t listen, couldn’t even hear what I was trying to say. Dummkopf,” she snorts, but it’s affectionate. “How you managed to become a spy…” she shakes her head, forlorn.

“You knew?” Illya asks blankly. He shouldn’t be surprised, because she’s always right, but he’s still surprised. “When?”

“A while,” Gaby says, and puts away her book. “I wasn’t sure until Carantec. The way he looked at you, at me, at us... The way you looked back. I thought he had decided to own up to it, but apparently he’s still unsure.” She jerks her head towards the bedroom door, still closed tight. 

“Have you talked to him at all?”

Gaby shakes her head. “I’ve been in to check on him a few times, but he’s been sleeping. I don’t like that cough, but I don’t think we need to worry about it just yet. I don’t think he’s been ignoring me, either. He’s just tired.”

“Has he eaten?”

“Yes, but— Oh for god’s sake, Illya, take off your coat. You’ll melt into a puddle in here.”

She’s right. The air is warm and close, comfortingly so, but the longer he’s been standing here the less comforting it’s been getting. He shrugs out the coat and strips off his gloves, then hangs his hat up last. 

“Come sit down,” Gaby says, patting the seat next to her. “Easier to talk when we’re not a room apart.”

“So,” she says, once he’s settled and a drink has been pressed into his hands. “Let’s talk about Solo, and how we seem to all be in love with each other.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO EVERYONE, I'M NOT DEAD. If you're reading this, then you are a brave and patient soul because it's been well over a year since the last update, and you have my heartfelt thanks for sticking with me. There's probably one or two more chapters left, depending on when I hit the next plot hurdle and how I feel like breaking it up. I apologize for leaving you hanging for so long, but I trust you have found good and rewarding fics to read (and write) in the meantime! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and as always, I welcome your comments and feedback!

**Author's Note:**

> The original prompt, as well as the less polished version of the fill, can be found [here](https://kinkfromuncle.dreamwidth.org/640.html?thread=16000)


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